Morning Prayers – LAUDS

Invitatory Prayers here

It is good to give thanks to the Lord,

To sing praises to your name, oh Most High;

To declare your steadfast love in the morning,

Your faithfulness by night,

To the music of the lute and the harp,

To the melody of the lyre.

For you, oh Lord, have made me glad by your work;

At the works of your hands I sing for joy.

How great are your works, oh Lord!

Your thoughts are very deep!

The dullard cannot know,

The stupid cannot understand this:

Though the wicked sprout like grass

And all evildoers flourish,

They are doomed to destruction forever,

But you, oh Lord, are on high forever.

For your enemies, oh Lord,

For your enemies shall perish;

All evildoers shall be scattered.

But you have exalted my horn like that of the wild ox;

You have poured over me fresh oil.

My eyes have seen the downfall of my enemies;

My ears have heard the doom of my evil assailants.

The righteous flourish like the palm tree,

He grows like a cedar in Lebanon.

They are planted in the house of the Lord;

They flourish in the courts of our God.

In old age they still produce fruit;

They are always green and full of sap,

Showing that the Lord who is my rock is upright

And that there is no unrighteousness in him.

Give ear, oh heavens, and I will speak;

Let the earth hear the words of my mouth.

May my teaching drop like the rain,

My speech condense like the dew;

Like gentle rain on grass,

Like showers on new growth.

For I will proclaim the name of the Lord;

Ascribe greatness to our God!

The Rock, his work is perfect,

All his ways are just.

A faithful God, without deceit,

Just and upright is he.

Yet his degenerate children

Have dealt falsely with him,

A perverse and crooked generation.

Do you thus repay the Lord,

Oh foolish and senseless people?

Is not he your father, who created you,

Who made you and established you?

Remember the days of old,

Consider the years long past;

Ask your father, and he will inform you;

Your elders, and they will tell you.

When the Most High apportioned the nations,

When he divided humankind,

He fixed the boundaries of the peoples

According to the number of the children of God.

Yet the Lord’s own portion was his people,

Jacob his allotted share.

He sustained him in a desert land,

In a howling wilderness waste;

He shielded him, cared for him,

Guarded him as the apple of his eye.

As an eagle stirs up its nest,

And hovers over its young;

As it spreads its wings, takes them up,

And bears them aloft on its pinions,

The Lord alone guided him;

No foreign god was with him.

Oh Lord, our Sovereign,

How majestic is your name in all the earth!

You have set your glory

Above the heavens.

The mouths of babes and infants utter

Songs of praise about your glory.

You have founded a bulwark because of your foes,

To silence the enemy and the avenger.

When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers,

The moon and the stars that you have established!

What are human beings that you are mindful of them,

Mortals that you care for them?

Yet you have made them a little lower than God,

Crowned them with glory and honor.

Given them dominion over the works of your hands!

You have put all things under their feet,

All sheep and oxen, and also the beasts of the field;

The birds of the air, and the fish of the sea,

Whatever passes along the paths of the seas.

Oh Lord, our Sovereign,

How majestic is your name in all the earth!

Rom. 12, 14-16

Bless those who persecute you: bless, and do not curse. Rejoice with those who rejoice, and weep with those who weep. Be of the same mind one toward another. Mind not high things, but condescend to men of humble estate.

End Prayers here

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